He watches me, studying my face for longer than feels comfortable, then shakes his head. “Why do you care?”
“I don’t,” I reply, but we both know I’m lying.
“Look, this will only take a few minutes,” I say. “You sign it and I promise you’ll never have to see me again. I’ll head right out of here, go straight back to the airport, and—”
A flash of surprise crosses his face, but it quickly disappears as his mouth sets into a stern, thin line. “You won’t,” he says. He pushes off the wall, and heads toward the door. “Grab a crate, will you?” he calls over his shoulder.
I stare at his retreating form for a second, then scramble after him. “What do you mean I won’t?”
He balances the bottled water on his hip, freeing his hand to turn the door handle. When he steps inside, he glances back at me and groans. “You seriously didn’t grab anything? We’re going to need to bring all of it in.”
If this is a delay tactic, it’s the strangest one I’ve experienced yet.
“What are you talking about?” I ask as I follow, jumping when the heavy door swings shut behind me. He still hasn’t changed that, then. He always said he would, but it’s the same old door that we used to have. Always slamming shut when I least expect it.
He finally puts the water down, dropping the pallet onto a stack of similar crates assembled on the floor. “Don’t you read the news?”
My jaw almost drops. Is he kidding me? The man who rarely picked up a newspaper, who barely paid attention when I watched the news or put on NPR is askingmeif I ever read the news.
“You know I do.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Well, things change. People change. It’s not like you and I know each other anymore.”
Ouch. That hurts. It shouldn’t because he’s only stating the truth, but it stings. Like a manicurist rubbing acetone over a paper cut. “Well, I haven’t changed,” I say, before I quickly correct myself. “Changed in that way, I mean. Of course I read the news.”
A muscle twitches in his jaw. “So, you came here. To my house. Fully knowing what was about to happen.”
“Knowingwhatwas about to happen?”
His brows snap together. “There’s a hurricane in the Gulf, Meena.”
“It’s hurricane season,” I reply. “There’s always a storm in the Gulf.” But even as I say the words, I know they’re coming from a place of denial.No. No, no, no, no, no.
I pull out my phone, and the cracked, distorted screen is filled from top to bottom with blurry images. Messages I can’t read. Notifications I can’t make sense of. But I don’t have to be able to read them to know what they all say.
I rack my brain, trying to recall whether I read or saw anything about this. Nothing popped up when I booked my flight here. No warning indicating that a storm was on its way. I vaguely recall aheadline about a hurricane forming off the coast, but after some time, the headlines about these things start to run together. For good reason. Most of these storms don’t materialize into anything. They tend to dissipate before reaching the shore.
Still, if something was close to Houston, surely I would have noticed it. Surely someone would have told me.
“Was your flight canceled?”
My eyes dart up. I expect him to look smug or cocky. But his expression is almost gentle. More relaxed. Open.
I lift a hand to my forehead, trying to rub the tension out of it. “I don’t know. My phone’s not working. I can’t tell.”
“When was it supposed to leave?”
“At ten.”
He nods, but from that stiff, stilted movement I can tell he thinks there’s no way that plane is leaving tonight.
“But everything was fine,” I say. “Earlier. Everything was okay. I…No one mentioned anything about a storm when I left—”
“It was veering east,” he says. “No one was predicting it would come this way until midmorning.” He ducks down, removing a water bottle from the plastic wrapping and handing it to me.
I twist the cap off and gulp it gratefully.
“I had stocked up,” Nikhil continues. “At the beginning of the season. Just in case. So, I’ve got plenty of water and food. And we have hours until it makes landfall. It’s supposed to get here tonight, so we’ll have more than enough time to board up the windows and move some things up to the second floor…”
